Online Social Networks

Week 30

Professional Online Social Networks

Create a reflective entry where you critically discuss the use of social media in YOUR teaching OR professional development.

When I started to think about whether I use social media in my teaching, initially I thought- certainly not.  The children I teach are five for goodness sake- no I do not use social media in my teaching.  Then I had a rethink.  It turns out that I actually do use social media in my practice- in fact quite a lot it is just that it might look a bit different at my end of the school than it would up the school in Year 7 and 8.

I started to think about some of the ways I do use social media in my practice. There are a number of ways that I do.  I use Facebook a lot, not just in my social life but also in my professional life.  In my social life I am very much a ‘lurker’ on Facebook.  I love to read what other people are up to and to occasionally ‘like ‘or on a rarer occasion comment.  It got me thinking about why I am a lurker in my personal life and I think if I am honest, it is because of my profession.  I am fully aware that what I post could easily connect with my professional life and I really don’t want to be implicated in anything and for that matter- I actually just don’t really want my two worlds to collide.  My professional life is different again.  I am connected to a few teaching pages on Facebook that I have got to a point where I almost rely on them.  I am often inspired to use the ideas in my practice that I see on these social media sites.  If I need advice or have a question, I can jump on Facebook to ask my “friends.”  I have also enjoyed the way in which my ideas and inspiration does not have to be found in my own back yard- it could be from anywhere in the world.  Once or twice I have even shared some of my ideas that hopefully have been helpful to other teachers.

To a much lesser extent I use twitter and blogger in my teaching.  I use twitter again as a lurker and I have sometimes stumbled across readings or information that I have interested me in my practice. I could and probably should be far more actively involved in using this as a platform for my teaching.

The children I teach are too young to have their own social media accounts or even an individual blog and this is possibly the biggest challenge to me as a teacher.  We use a blog to connect with the parents and whanau in our community to keep them up to date with the goings on at school.  I have also used Seesaw in my practice to connect with interested parties about children’s work and progress.

A lot of criticism has been aimed at social media and the effect it has on the way students process and retain information and how distracting it can be.  I certainly believe that the social media needs to be carefully monitored but at the same time I feel that it offers opportunity for learning and interactivity far greater than it was when I went to school.  The technology that we are using in our classrooms and the skills these kids are gaining is reshaping the landscape of education.

  Joosten (2012, p.6) explains that in today’s word is a virtual place where people can share anything with anybody anywhere.  The reality of the world today is that we are connected with many different people in our personal lives and also in our professional lives.  We can connect with people from all over the globe including experts in our field and better still, we can pretty much do this instantly.  The children we are teaching today have lived their whole lives in this world of the internet and do not know a world without it.  

I think the challenge we face as teachers is to accept the social media and the connections it creates is here to stay and the classroom or physical school environment is not the only place our students are gathering to learn and do their work.  They will be gathering on line.  For me personally, I need to find some ways that I can increase the use of social media for the children themselves, rather than just me using it. Davis (2017) agrees that it can be a challenging to incorporate social media into lessons. There are many gray areas for teachers to navigate, such as setting guidelines, accessibility at school, and student safety.   These need to have robust guidelines if we are to implement the use of social media successfully and this, I feel will be one of our challenges.

 For children to go to school and not be exposed to technology and the connections it enables us to have and the learning it enables us to do would be to fail to prepare these kids for living in the 21^st century and after all, isn’t that what school is supposed to do- prepare our students for the future in the world in which they will live and hopefully thrive?

REFERENCES

Davis, M ( 2017) Social Media for Teachers: Guides, Resources and Ideas. Retrieved from: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-media-resources-educators-matt-davis\

Joosten, T (2013) Pearson:Social Media for Teaching and Learning.  Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/tjoosten/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-27456257?ref=http://professorjoosten.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/pearson-social-media-for-teaching-and.html